Jessica Maloney 23jess@uclink.berkeley.edu
Current email (2/20/00) is: jessica@peacedividend.com
University of California at Berkeley
Submitted: Sat, 18 Jun 1994 14:12:59 -0800
Abstract: Material culture studies are integral to historical archaeology: we can trace changes in cognition of the world as we examine stuff made and left behind by our ancestors. While writing is a conscious act of recording one's own world view, the unconscious acts of creation, use and disposal are mostly unbiased. Changes in artifacts, in this case in tattoos, reflect changing beliefs and behavior within a culture.
Historical archaeology is a vital supplement to dead histories, as a test to historical assumptions or generalizations, and to provide new information for interpretation in today's social sciences. This paper is a brief exploration of an esoteric branch of historical archaeology- the artifacts are tattoos on the skins of people, representative of a culture. This sort of artifact is definitively self expressive, is a part of its maker. The tattoo is dynamic and can go through, (and be a document of), transformations in its cycle of creation, use and disposal (or sometimes preservation), through additions, coverups, scarring or removal. This is an important and little explored element of American material culture.
In contemplating various aspects of American material culture it occurred to me that in our "disposable society" the things we use are transient to our persons. Disposable cups, razors, food packaging... we spend very little time with the actual objects which we use in our everyday lives, and rarely consider them. I looked for objects that are more permanent and thought provoking to the people using them, and I found them imbedded in my own skin: tattoos.
The tattoo phenomenon is today a legacy of American culture, yet very little has been written about it. The history of our culture can be traced through the indelible etchings on skins of people of different times, yet this has not been done. Books that I did find exploring realms of tattoo focused on other societies; the practice is demeaned to "primitive" status, to exemplification of that Other that anthropologists so love to write about. Tattooing is an American cultural phenomenon as well, used by individual members of our society for individual reasons. These reasons change as social reality changes: the demographics and imagery of tattoos change with social and economic change. Sometimes these respective changes are dramatic.
In the course of my research I found that recent articles by doctors, psychologists and various social scientists all focus on antisocial , unhealthy and bizarre aspects of tattooing. A book by a self-proclaimed philosopher and tattooist positions the tattoo client as a scapegoat (Steward, 1964). Anthropologists examine only specific cultural or atavistic implications of tattooing; these are seen as indigenous only to "primitive" societies. Yet tattooing has been a practice in European cultures for millennia.
The oldest known human artifacts of tattooing, the decorated skins of peoples past, date to about 7300 BP in Europe. Europeans practiced tattooing regularly. Ancient Greeks wrote of the terrifying visage of the Pict warriors, so called because of the tattoos they applied to exemplify their might. The Roman empire used tattoos for transmission of secret messages, inscribed on the scalp of the messenger; slaves, criminals and hapless acquaintances of Caligula found themselves forcibly tattooed.
With the advent of Christianity came the loss of personal responsibility and new awesome control of people through the organized, militarized Church. The Emperor Constantine, in about 325 AD, proclaimed that tattooing was heretical, defacement of bodies made in God's own image; however, tattoos of Christian iconography were allowable.
In 787 the Council of Churches forbade all tattooing. This decision and its affects may explain some of today's negative attitudes, and taboos in religious sectors, surrounding tattooing today in America. People become tattooed for an infinite variety of reasons.
Primarily tattoos serve as identification, either personal, romantic, or professional. Tattoos are magical, religious, or talismanic protection. Tattoos for cosmetic reasons (eyebrows, lip color, eyeliner) are very popular. Many become tattooed as a permanent commitment to group membership.
Tattooing is done as a gender enhancement; for women, as a mark of liberation from other's control or possession, to challenge the masculine realms of strength or aggression. Most first tattoos are personal rites of passage, events lending affirmation of importance to an individual which are lacking from our society.
This is the primal form of material culture, being a substantive expression of individual and cultural reality. The body is a vessel which both contains the essence of self and expresses it. Marking of the body has been used to substantiate the primal awareness of individuality, or group identity. Whether identifying with or against the status quo, it is a striking reflection of the tattooed person's cultural milieu. The tattoo is one of the most intimate, personal and profoundly serious forms of esthetic expression practiced; its relatively rare use emphasizes its sanctity.
Miami and San Francisco are the cores of tattoo culture for Americans and Europeans today, as they were 500 years ago. It was via the voyages of discovery that the art of tattooing was reintroduced to European culture. Decorated "Savages" and "Princes of America" from the West Indies and the Pacific coast were exhibited at fairs and palaces. For the original users, tattoos were connected with magic, religion, or rites of passage. The white men, however, were interested solely in the technology which could be modified and used in their own culture; they took the art but left the magic.
As with many other areas of American material culture, we can observe temporal shifts in styles and uses of tattooing. I am not going to attempt the further investigation of shifts that occur across geographical or class boundaries, for although these areas are ripe for study and are very exciting in their possibilities such an examination would be vast. I will show here an approximation of four distinct eras of American tattooing, each reflecting dramatic shifts in the social, economic and cultural environment in which tattooing is practiced. In the first, tattooing was perceived as a novelty; by the second era the tattoo had been assimilated into and used to bolster the American ideal of masculine patriotism. By the third period of American tattooing emblems became less advertizements of male virility and more personal expressions. Today, in what I have arbitrarily designated the 4th distinct era of American tattooing, people are questioning the validity of "America First" and the "melting pot" fallacy. Tattoos are personal affirmations of valid alternatives to the status quo.
The first period began in the early 18th Century in England. In the not so distant past, sumptuary laws allowed only royalty and statesmen to wear elaborately embroidered clothing or other ornate decorations. To bypass these regulations and assert their own status, merchant and other classes took up tattooing as personal ornamentation.
The art was domesticated in America, in the beginning of the 19th Century, by P.T. Barnum and his travelling circus. "Tattooed Men" joined the circus, exhibiting themselves as oddities. The more fully tattooed the person was, the more money he could draw in. There arose a lucrative practice of full-body tattooing, face and hands and all, with Hawaiian, Maori and Borneo designs, with stories of capture and forced tattoo-torture at the hands of savages, and tales of white men becoming chiefs or shamen to "primitives." Women and whole families got in on the act, showcasing their skin decorations and often tales of capture by "Red Indians. " With this new high drama and fascination of tattooing, civilians of means sought out artists to embellish their own flesh with marks of grandeur. An identification with exotic, criminal elements of decadence, freedom, and sexual liberation drew many from the upper classes, even royalty and political figures, to become tattooed. Whole body-suits became the status quo, the body covered entirely except for the neck, face, hands and feet - tattoos became permanent garments. In this form American tattooing departed from the Pacific Island styles and Japanese expertise from which it had originally borrowed. Tattoos no longer conformed to patterns of musculature or emphasized physique, were no longer huge cohesive pieces, but were applied one small piece at a time, forming a collection of many artists works. (Examples are included in the attached appendix.) Having a tattoo proclaimed the wearer as belonging to that class with the means to employ an artist and the freedom or liberation to be unique. Popular designs were copies of famous paintings, "Wild West" scenes, and coats of arms; birds and flowers adorned both sexes.
Tattooing in America (and England) became largely the domain of sailors in the Navy , who were tattooed by artists native to the lands they visited. Tattoos established an unbreakable bond between the individual sailor and his shipmates. They also served a talismanic function, protecting the man from drowning and sharks. Sailor tattoos have since evolved into a separate, very important branch of the tattoo culture's tree with its own esoteric symbolism:
"When you had gone 5,000 miles at sea, you got a bluebird on your
chest, When you'd gone 10,000, you got the second bird on the other side.
When you made your second cruise, you got a clothes line with skivvies and
girls' stockings between them. If you crossed the equator you got a
Neptune on your leg, and for security you got a pig on one foot and a
rooster on the other, a charm that would keep you from drowning at sea. A
dragon showed you had crossed the International Date Line." (Webb, in
Tattootime #3, 1988)
The Civil War marked a change in the demographic occurrence of tattoos. Military men procured tattoos to commemorate battles; they wore their rank on their skin. Majors, generals field commanders, and soldiers wore marks of valor, and portraits of the Commander in Chief. Everyone in both armies was getting tattooed, and all with the same designs. One artist, "Lew the Jew", transformed the basic imagery of tattooing while serving in the Spanish-American War, and later designed and sold prototypes of sample charts which formed the basis for the "flash" sheets used by almost every professional tattooist, globally, today.
It was not until after the First World War that tattooing became commercialized. It fell from being perceived as an art to a practice in this second major era. More people with less specialization began applying homogeneous designs; fees were reduced, and tattoos became popular in lower classes. Most work came from "flash" sheets; unique creativity was frowned upon. Men used tattoos to express their virility; the majority of tattoos were overtly sexual or used innuendo. Snakes, girls and flags, patriotic girls and hot dogs, pirate girls, girls that would kiss with the flex of a biceps, goddesses, and alluring foreign women, were the popular iconography. Tattoos expressed a strong heterosexual pride (this was used by men of other orientations to prove their manliness to themselves or their buddies). The wealthy and royal had now to hide their own markings to escape admonishment from their peers (Lady Churchill took to hiding the snake on her arm under a silk band).
The Great Depression deposed millions of men from their ranks and statuses in society to a level of despair and humility. Tattooists could no longer hold permanent shops working full time. By the 1930s most tattooists in America were itinerant, travelling with fairs. The creation of the Civilian Conservation Corps camps by President Roosevelt led to a new boom in tattooing. After receiving their monthly wages, men would stream into the tattoo shops; designs sold for 25c-75c, about an hour's wages. Doc Webb says of his clients :" These were the ones who had, at one time, been hardy adventurers, living on the higher area of society; they were now reduced to sharing a hand-rolled cigarette and a bottle of cheap wine, sleeping in doorways and alleys."
The unsanitary conditions of most tattoo studios led to the spreading of syphilis in epidemic proportions; soon many states outlawed the practice of tattooing . It is still illegal to practice the art in most of New England (even, until very recently, in New York - a major hub of the tattoo world). It has since been passed down through families or apprentice - master lines. It is truly a folk tradition, conservative in technology and imagery. The electric tattoo gun was invented by Tom Riley, an apprentice of Thomas Edison, and has changed very little. As part of his training, the tattooist must build and learn to maintain his own machines.
The present era of the modern American tattoo began in the 1960s and is defined by its newfound respect as an art, the quality of work, and hygienic practice. The new, small but influential local (San Francisco), tattooing community was cultivated from the legions who immigrated to the area in the 1950s, following military and industrial growth and subsequent employment opportunities. While the International Folk Style (created for sailors) remained popular for the majority of clients (conservative, male, lower class), the relaxed social conventions associated with the "California lifestyle" provided a fertile environment for tattoo creativity. This was also a time of renewed interest in Pacific and Japanese cultures. The new tattoo style was a focus on larger cohesive pieces, customized to the wearer and representing his personality, spirit, fantasies. Japanese warrior or dragon-and-flaming-pearl motifs were interspersed with Borneo designs of scorpions and spirals. New works followed the body's natural contours. Feathers or scales covered vast expanses of flesh. This became the new American Classic Style, created and perpetuated in San Francisco by Ed Hardy and Cliff Raven . However, as styles changed, gender attitudes wrought by the sailor-tattoo community remained fast. Even the "progressive" practitioners of the day were misogynistic:
"I established a policy of refusing to tattoo a woman unless she
were twenty-one, married and accompanied by her husband, with documentary
proof to show their marriage. The only exception to this was the lesbians,
and they had to be over twenty-one and prove it... they frightened the
sailors and many of the city-boys out of the shop. I did not relish their
arrival nor particularly want their business. One was usually fat as a
pig, in slacks, which from behind made her her butt look like two little
boys fighting under a blanket. The appearance of any woman in a tattoo
shop was always a matter of concern for me." (Steward, 1964)
Most interviews with tattooists of that era reveal that the only tattoos that were done on women were of a property-marking nature, with names on their thighs or breasts, or a flower or butterfly on a shoulder.
The newest generation of professionals began their careers in school: the San Francisco Art Institute has produced some of the finest tattoo artists of our time. Note that the label of the worker has changed from tattooist to artist ("tattooist" is still used by traditionalists or those who work only from "flash"). Eschewing conventional designs, these tattoo artists are well versed in the ethnography of tattoo, technically skilled and conceptually innovative. The old rules regarding imagery and execution are consistently being broken by new rebellious generations of artists; tattoo has become a new metascience. The artists frequently mediate processes of introspection for their customers, and construct works customized to each client's persona. Today's tattoo clients istrseeking to mark themselves as unique in our society that strives toward homogeneity. More and more women are becoming tattooed - reclaiming their bodies from the control exerted upon them by the state and by our male-oriented society. My own first tattoo was a ritual act affirming my ownership of my self, celebrating my first year of indepenence at 15, after escaping a brutal home environment that is all too common for today's adolescents.
Modern tattooing draws its wonderful unique practice from many areas. Youth movements of the 1970s, -80s and -90s have changed the way clients and tattoo artists think about and use skin as expression. The apocalyptic drama of being young at the end of a century of war and a millennium of constant expansion has produced a need to live life fast and to its fullest. The punk movement, which had its genesis in the 1970s and has apparently been taken up by a new generation, brought a new attitude to tattooing: a reaction , via non-conformity, against our conservative, military governments. Popular designs of the late 70s and early eighties were badges of the "Peace Punk" movement.
In the "Post-Punk" community today there is a romance with times and cultures distant from the present and identification with them. The "Modern Primitives" movement is a rejection of the mechanization and market labelling of people today, a quest for fulfillment through operating under principles of small-scale societies. Many rituals, such as piercing and kavandi-bearing, have been taken from other cultures and practiced here (entirely out of the context, but that's another paper). New bold "tribal" patterns represent a new use of skin for expression - bold clarity, visibility and appreciation of abstract form for its own sake . The designs are big, solid, black lines taken from Kalimantan (Borneo), Australian, New Zealand, and ancient Celtic cultures; the skeleton designs of punks have been stylized into the "tribal" arm-band. Native American shield or bird designs are very popular, and talismanic.
The American culture has very successfully taken the personal art form of tattoo from cultures it objectifies as primitive and modified it to fit its own needs. Like many objects of American material culture (especially those tied to foodways, which are also personal), this one was borrowed in the act of colonization and war and made into a staple we cannot imaging being without. I have found a beautiful correspondence between changing social and economic realities and the role played by tattooing. In the last two decades of astonishing change in our world, the very elastic tattoo phenomenon has kept pace.
Ebensten, H. 1953 Pierced Hearts and True Love: An Illustrated HIstory of the Origin and Development of European Tattooin and a Survey of its Present State. D. Verschoyle, London Grumaet, D. 1983 Tattoos as a Psychic Crutch. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, v53 Newman, P. 1982 Tattoos and Psychosis. Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, v43 RE Search 1989 Modern Primitives: And Investigation of Contemporary Adornment and Ritual. RE Search Publications, San Francisco Rubin, Arnold, editor 1988 Marks of Civilization: Artistic Transformations of the Human Body. University of California, Los Angeles Steward, Samuel 1964 Bad Boys and Tough Tattoos. Oxford Press Webb, Spider 1976 Heavily Tattooed Men and Women. Mc Graw Hill